CHAPTER 185: THE TORTOISE AND THE HARE

"Joe, it’s time for me to visit Rafael Camal de Leon and begin humanity’s colonization of the Galaxy. I’ve put it off too long. Switch my sense over to my adult android form. I’m going to visit Rafael and Maribel."

"As you wish, he has been back in Guatemala for a couple of weeks now, smoldering at being sidelined. Maribel has done a remarkable job of keeping him calm. As you know his tendencies were too well-ingrained to be fully erased by memory implant therapy. Breaking the promise of making him President has been... triggering for him."

"Yeah, I know. That’s kind of why I’ve been finding other excuses not to do this. Where are they now?"

"Rafael and Maribel are currently meeting with the community leaders at Laguna Larga. They spearheaded the effort to restore the villagers to their original lands before they were kicked out in 2017. Perenco, the oil and gas company taking their land, wasn’t especially pleased. They are trying to sue the government, but the government has referred the case to the UEC since it was Maribel under UEC authority who make the decree that displaced people like the Q’eqchi would be restored to their lands and the corporations who claimed them for oil, plantations, or other resource extraction would be evicted. Lago Laguna is just one such community in this area of Guatemala and Southern Mexico. Even when the communities aren’t forced to leave, the industrial mining and drill operations often pollute groundwater to the extent it becomes undrinkable."

"Maribel and Rafael have fabricated high tech filters for those areas and forced the work to stop. Some of the companies resisted, refusing to pull out, but they started finding their heavy equipment and even small buildings missing when their people came to work each morning (via LITV directed by Maribel) and they realized it was not a winnable effort for them."

"So now, they’re taking a victory lap of the area?" I asked.

"Not exactly, because the land has been misused for year since they were forced to leave, Maribel’s Food First and a new medical clinic are provided some support until they get their communities re-established. A significant portion of the people have accumulated some toxins from the water and the clinics are extracting them to prevent long-term health complications. The current meeting is part of her outreach campaign to make sure everybody visits the clinic for screening. While they are there, they get a suite of vaccinations and screening for treatment for a variety of conditions, including a schedule of nutritional supplements as the poor diet in the camps they were moved to has left some deficiencies."

"That was going on under Arroyo’s government? Maybe Rafael should take over."

"It was largely a continuation of previous polices, but no, he didn’t take any significant steps to correct or stop the situation. Guatemala isn’t alone in this, by the way, many countries in Central and South America actively practice displacing local indigenous people in favor of industry and development. The companies offer tax income, jobs and economic growth, while the indigenous often prefer their traditional way of life and don’t participate in the modern economy in a meaningful way."

"I think we disagree over the definition of ’meaningful’.", I said dryly. "Obviously that stops and gets reversed in every UEC member state."

"Yes, but that introduces a somewhat similar problem. Now we are displacing those people who worked for those companies and moved to be near the sites. They are losing their jobs, income and, if the land reverts to the rightful owners, they become a new displaced group."

"How are Mom and Maribel handling that?"

"The displaced workers are given a stipend and assistance to find new homes elsewhere in the country, or even in the indigenous communities if both parties find that acceptable. Eventually, jobs won’t matter as we move to the licensing fee redistribution economic model."

"There’s a lot going on that I don’t even know about isn’t there, Joe."

"Yes, but you have good people to look after the details for you."

I sigh. "How about Ukraine, couldn’t they use more help rebuilding? Can we offer any displaced workers a job there? Maybe implant the necessary language... It could be a temporary assignment, a year or whatever, or if they want to stay there after that, that’s fine too. Remember the UEC requires free movement and settlement between UEC member nations."

"That’s a good idea, we couldn’t exactly put the Russian soldiers back into Ukraine to rebuild, and there aren’t enough repatriated Ukrainians to rebuild everything that was destroyed in the war."

"So, the only thing I haven’t figured out yet about my plan for Rafael is how to replace Maribel, she’s doing so much with the charity groups. We could use two of her, losing her here is going to hurt. Plus, Mom, I know they can still visit if you jump Mom there, but it won’t be as often and I know they’ve become very close as long-lost ’sisters’. I really hate to send her away to another planet, but we need her to keep Rafael from reverting to his full-on pre-therapy killer psyche."

"We could just replace her."

"Well, yeah, but with who? We’ll never find another Maribel."

"I think you’re forgetting something, King Tim. Maribel is a created being, she is an android with a fabricated personality and memory profile, based in part on the personality traits your mother adopted when she played that role in the early stages. I can just make a copy of her, even remove the attachment to Rafael that we put in the first Maribel. I can even make two copies of her, or more."

Realization dawned on me. Earlier, I had thought that I might want to be in two places at once, so I had started trying to learn how to control my android body and my real body at the same time. That was the absolute wrong approach, the real solution was much simpler.

"So, Joe, that gives me another idea."

"Uh-oh."

I scowled, "No, hear me out. If you can copy Maribel’s psyche, memories, personality whatever, everything that makes her who she is and put it into a second android body, could you do that for a real human, like me for example."

"Yes. Piece of cake. Understand though that the two different Timothy Baileys would begin to diverge after the second was created, because their experiences and new memories would be different. Their personalities would drift apart further and further over time, eventually as different as ordinary brothers perhaps."

"No they wouldn’t, Joe, once again the eight-year-old is outthinking you, the Infinite quantum computing AI that uses the entire substrate of the universe as its ’mainframe.’"

"Oh, really? Explain it to me then, King Timmy of the mighty intellect."

"It’s simple really, you use dual direct memory implant either continuously or at periodic, but short intervals to keep the tow minds synced up."

"Yeah, well that would work. I’m still smarter than you though."

I smiled, "Not for long, I just doubled my processing power, your already operating at your maximum potential. I’ll pass you by like... well, like something really fast passing something really slow."

"Like the hare and the tortoise?" Joe supplied.

"Exactly!" I agreed, "I’ll pass you by like the hare running by... Hey, wait a minute. You tricked me! The tortoise won that race!"

"Yes, he did, because the hare couldn’t focus on the goal long enough to use his superior abilities to win. Did you want some ice cream, King Tim?"

"Ice cream would be great, let’s invent a new flavor! I’m thinking... blackberries and... blueberries. We’ll call it Black and Blue Berry Ice Cream. Have the synthesizer make a me a bowl. OK, what were we talking about?"

"The lesson of the tortoise and the hare I believe."

"Oh, right. Anyway, I’m way faster than you, Joe. You won’t have a chance."

"Oh well. Say, your ice cream is ready."

"Awesome! Give me a few minutes will you, I’m taking an ice cream break."

For some reason, Joe found that funny, and his laughter rolled around me from thin air as his android form was currently engaged elsewhere, doing what was probably very important stuff.

When I finished my Black and Blue Berry Ice Cream, which was excellent, by the way, we decided we would make one replacement Maribel, but another copy of me with our memories to be kept synchronized with rolling direct memory implants so that all our experiences would be shared between us almost as if we were one person in the two places at once. Joe said he’d have to use an intensity fade in on the transferred memories. In other words, the implanted memories would sort of seep into my awareness growing stronger over time, so they didn’t overwhelm my current sensory inputs and leave me all disoriented and confused about where I was and what I was doing. The second me would be full-time in an adult android version of me. I decided to keep the same form and face as my other adult android, figuring it would be too hard to keep track of who did what if each of me used a separate name and face.